Interesting Facts and Stories

The highest ranking american killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps.
By Bootie, in "WW2 facts?" Feb 17, 2010.

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He was killed by friendly fire when a USAAF Eighth Air Force bomb landed in his foxhole near Saint-Lô during Operation Cobra as part of the Battle of Normandy.-
 
During the Siege of Tobruk the Australian Infantry of the 9th Division occupied the exterior line known as the red line. On a daily basis troops manning each outpost would travel halfway towards their neighbors on either side to ensure they were safe and no silent Axis breakthrough had occurred. Rather than walking the full distance they would stop halfway at predetermined markers and change the arrangement of a pair of sticks at a fixed point - Alternating between a cross like shape and having them lay in parallel. If the sticks did not change position when the same patrol returned on there next outing, then they knew something had happened to their neighbors and would continue on to investigate.

These regular actions were known as 'love and kisses' patrols. This allowed the Australians to minimize movement in the hot desert while maintaining an effective watch on the perimeter.
 
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Siege of Tobruk Second fact... (Sorry reading an interesting book at the moment).

The Australian and British contingent at the Tobruk Garrison is well documented, however what is less well known is that there was an Indian raised Battalion of around 500 men which manned the exterior defenses with the Australians. The 18th King Edward VIII's Own Cavalry manned the western most portion of the line next to the coast.

They were noted to be particularly brutal and against their foes. Where Australian troops sent out on patrol would remain essentially riflemen carrying the bare esstentials, the Indians heavily favoured stealth. The Indians were known for proceeding out on night patrols barefoot or in flimsy 'flip flops' to help maintain their silence, while for personal defence some only opted to carry knives. In the darkness, there were a number of cases where Indian patrols ambushed Australian positions by mistake but were able to tell their frightened and pinned foe by feeling their shirt collar for the standard badge Australian troops wore as part of their uniform. When ambushing sleeping Italian forces that manned positions opposite their lines, the Indians would employ terror tactics - Slicing the necks of their foes while purposefully keeping the last man alive to wake up to a horrific site. The idea was this man would return to the rear areas and in spreading stories instil fear and panic sapping morale.
 
@Ithikial

Nice work. I seem to remember by old man telling me a story about the Gurkas many years ago and it was very similar, they would assess whose tent they had entered by the boots and then deal with them in the same fashion you describe.

I dont recall which book I read this in, but perhaps my best Tobruk fact (it should probably be described as infamous) was that when the Germans came back the second time, some units were amazed (and no doubt grateful) that the ammunition they had left after the first siege was still stacked in place awaiting their return! Now how did we let that happen...
 
Wasn't us! :D The Australian 9th Division was sent to Syria for rest and refit once they were taken out of the line which was actually during the siege itself. Only one Australian Battalion remained for the full stretch due to logistical problems and General Morshead wanting an Australian presence on the ground to ‘see this thing through.’ Outside of the 9th Division, one additional Australian brigade which was in Tobruk, formally of 7th Division and they returned to Australia to help face the Japanese threat. The 9th remained in the Middle East / North Africa theatre, rushed back to the front in time for 1st El Alamein. The 9th left North Africa for home after 2nd El Alamein - they never returned to Tobruk in Monty’s push west.


The amount of captured Italian equipment the Australians used to hold Tobruk is actually quite mind boggling. If Battlefront ever does a CM: Afrika, you couldn’t do it justice if you didn’t include the allowance of formations to use captured equipment.
 
Far more British soldiers fought on the Gallipoli peninsula than Australians and New Zealanders put together.

The UK lost four or five times as many men in the brutal campaign as her imperial Anzac contingents. The French also lost more men than the Australians.

The Aussies and Kiwis commemorate Gallipoli ardently, and understandably so, as their casualties do represent terrible losses both as a proportion of their forces committed and of their small populations.
 
Bootie said:
The Aussies and Kiwis commemorate Gallipoli ardently, and understandably so, as their casualties do represent terrible losses both as a proportion of their forces committed and of their small populations.
Click to expand...

Probably because it has something to do with it being our first wars as Nations. :) But I agree ask most Aussies and Kiwi's about this fact and they'll mistakenly call bullshit.

Technically Australia's first overseas war was the Boer War, but the Australian contingents went over the South Africa as part of the separate colonies' militia forces and Federation occurred while the war was being fought.
 
In France, in 1914, during WW I, french General Joseph Gallieni used a fleet of taxis, the drivers still wearing their caps, to transport his troops from Paris to the Battle of the Marne.-
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On this day 30th January in 1915 Joachim Pieper was born.

The Tet Offensive started in Vietnam.

And 2 notable designers from WW2 died today....

1951 Ferdinand Porsche, German tank designer, at 75
1958
Ernst H. Heinkel, German aircraft designer, at 70
 
Glen Douglas (1927-2011) served in WW2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.-

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He was born on the Okanogan Reserve in Canada, a Lakes-Okanogan Indian and part of the Colville Tribe. An article in the Spokesman Review newspaper relates how he was taken from his home at age 12 and sent to a boarding school in Cranbrook, British Columbia. “We were beaten for speaking our language. They were beating the devil out of me,” Douglas was reported saying during an interview in 2004. He was later to receive monetary reimbursement from the Canadian government for that period of his life.-

Douglas moved to the U.S. when he was 14 where he worked on his uncle’s ranch near Oroville, Washington and joined the U.S. Army when he was just 17, the start of a long and distinguished career that saw him take part in three wars: World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam.

Douglas was in the Army with the 101st Airborne most of the time and joined the 101st in Belgium in 1945. During the 2004 interview Douglas said he was injured by a grenade in 1953 during the Korean War. During his first tour in Vietnam he was an intelligence analyst with a Special Forces team.

Douglas was chairman of the Native American Indian Advisory Council at the Spokane VA. He was also an alcohol and drug counselor and worked with the recovery community.-
 
On this day, feb 23, 1945, U.S. flag raised on Iwo Jima.-
Here’s Joe Rosenthal snapping a posed shot minutes after the second flag raising.
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Four of the Flag Raisers (Bradley, Hayes, Sousley & Strank) appear with their jubilant buddies. Strank, Sousley and many of these boys would soon be dead.-
Easy Company had been fighting 4 days. They had 40% casualties to date.-
 
Some 60,000 British soldiers died in a single day, on July 1, 1916, in the Battle of the Somme. The British constituted the third largest army at Somme, after the French and Germans, all of whom suffered comparably.

For a sense of the scale, consider the worst day of casualties recorded on US soil: the 1862 Civil War Battle of Antietam that claimed more than 28,000 from both the Union and Confederacy.
 
Wow...Louis, we were both right...LOL
"The resulting trench
system on the Western Front not only covered the equivalent of 25,000
miles (enough to encircle the world) but also stretched non-stop from
Belgium to Switzerland. To explain the main features of trench warfare
we must look at all the points the trench design, the modern
technology etc."
 
At just 49.07 years, Chad in Africa, has the lowest life expectancy in the world. Public infrastructure is almost nonexistent and human rights abuses are rampant. The landlocked country is flanked by instability, with Sudan to the east and the Central African Republic to the south.-

from businessinsider.com
 
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